Remember how I decided to do a mildly spontaneous weekend trip with some people from church? Well, that happened over the past weekend. And it was SUCH a good trip in every possible way. I continue to be amazed by the people God puts in my life. He knows what I need even when I don’t. This weekend was full of meaningful conversations and belly laughs and sharing heavy things and seeing each other not at our best and just being real with one another. I wasn’t close to any of the people I was travelling with, but 56 straight hours of togetherness has a way of changing things…
Let me tell you about the trip. Oh, and in case you don’t feel like reading all my words, feel free to just look at the pictures. I understand.
The two guys and I left Salatiga at about 2 PM on Friday. We went by car to the train station in Surakarta, about one hour southeast of home. Then we caught the 5 o’clock train to Surabaya (a city in East Java) where the other one-fourth of our group was waiting. We arrived shortly after 8 PM, met up with our fourth, then went to Carl’s Junior for three hours to wait for our ride to Bromo.
What we did was book a tour package thing that was all inclusive. We got to visit five different locations around Bromo, and they also provided all the transportation costs to and from the mountain. This is often the most convenient/cheapest way to do things. But it also means that we don’t get to operate on our own schedule.
So anyways, our driver picked us up at Carl’s Junior (which, BTW, I didn’t even know was a thing in Indonesia…) at 11 PM, and the four of us hit the road! It was a three hour drive to the base of Mount Bromo. At this point, I had been up since 6 AM, and I was really hoping to get some sleep during the car ride. I don’t think I got more than a total of 20 minutes though, as the car ride was extremely rough and I was prepared to go flying through the windshield at any moment. We arrived at the base of Bromo sometime around 2 AM. From there, we had to switch vehicles. So we moved all of our bags over to a waiting Jeep, and the four of us piled in the back on bench seats along the walls. It was a tight fit.
This Jeep ride was one of the more horrifying vehicle experiences of my life. I mean, I’ve lived in Southeast Asia for seven years. The driving typically doesn’t faze me. But this guy was Takumi and we were his tofu. We were having trouble staying put as he fishtailed through hairpin turns with the engine roaring in second gear the entire way up the mountain. He also thought it would be a great idea to pass all other vehicles… in the dark on the one lane road with a sheer drop-off on one side. It was a nail-biter, for sure. But after about an hour of that, we finally made it to the top.
I was told ahead of time that I would probably have to pay 10 times as much as my friends to get in. When people try to pull that on me, I just whip out my KITAS – my residency permit – and they are always like, “Oh, you LIVE here? OK. You pay the local price then.” But the tour company said that the people at Bromo didn’t care. White is white, KITAS or not. They wanted me to be prepared. So I was kind of dreading that. Because if there’s one thing I hate, it’s injustice, no matter how minor. But when the Jeep stopped for us to get out and pay, I dropped to the ground, legs all aquiver (I may have kissed the ground at one point), and walked boldly up to the payment counter. Or at least as boldly as I could on my cramped, shaky legs. A very gruff looking man gave me the up down and asked, “How many people in your Jeep?” I said in Indonesian, “Four”. He asked, “All foreigners?” I looked him straight in the eye and whispered very dramatically, “All locals”. He narrowed his eyes and stared at me for a long minute. Then gave me the local price.
(Full disclosure – it may not have been that dramatic. But I like to think that it was. Because gosh darnet, I fought for my rights and I WON!)
Anyyyyyyways. We drove the rest of the way to the peak of the mountain. We had to get out and walk the last little bit to the sunrise lookout spot. Sadly, our driver was so hell bent on getting to the top of the mountain before anyone else (hence all the crazy half-off-the-road passing other vehicles) that we basically did get to the top of the mountain before anyone else – AT THREE AM. Do you know how cold it is on top of a mountain at 3 AM?! And do you know what time the sun rises in Indonesia?! FIVE FIFTEEN!
BUT… let me tell you. Those two frigid hours of waiting were not wasted on us. We ate some delicious burgers that we had packed from Carl’s Jr. Granted, we couldn’t feel our fingers by the time we’d finished eating. BUT that was one of the best burgers I’ve EVER had. Like, in my life. So good. Also from the top of the mountain, we could see the Milky Way. Millions and millions of tiny stars everywhere. If sitting under a view like that doesn’t put you in awe of our great God, then I think you should get your eyes checked.
I tried to take a picture of the stars. But by that point, other people were trickling up to the lookout area, waving flashlights around and taking phone pictures of themselves repeatedly with the flash on. So that didn’t work out so well for me given that I was being blinded everywhere I looked and that the exposure kept getting messed up. But I did get this one of the stars in their 90 seconds of orbit.
By the time the sun started to rise, I was basically in my worst nightmare. I was shivering uncontrollably even under all my layers. (And lest you think I came unprepared, let me tell you – I packed a BLANKET. And I got made fun of for it. BUT IT WAS WORTH IT.) My stomach was hurting really badly (probably because of that massive burger I had just downed). I had been awake for 23 hours. AND by now the place was SO packed with people who had absolutely zero consideration for my American need for personal space. I mean, at one point, a lady parked her toddler on my lap while she tried to wipe the kid’s nose with a tissue. Also, there were so many selfie sticks and Gopros waving around everywhere, I could hardly enjoy the view.
It was an hour long battle of trying to stay upright while being jostled from all sides by tripods, elbows, small children, inconsiderate adults, etc. While attempting to take as many pictures as possible in between all the selfie sticks in the air. One nice thing about the crowd though was that they gave off an incredible amount of body heat. So… you win some, you lose some. And I did get some pretty stellar (I think) shots of the sky changing color as the sun started to rise.
We all eventually reached a point of not being able to tolerate the crowd anymore. Unfortunately, that point came before the sun actually came up. So we decided to walk around and try to find some other interesting vantage points. This was a winning idea, and it produced the following shots of craters and steaming vents and the earth waking up wrapped in a blanket of fog.
After we finished walking around the top of the mountain (AKA the point at which we feared we just might freeze to death), we started walking back down to our Jeep. Thankfully, there were many people capitalizing off the cold weather, and there was no shortage of places at which to buy hot beverages and noodles. So obviously, that’s what we did. We sat and had coffee and noodles and talked about God who made the mountains and the stars and the sunrise and all of the obnoxious people. And it was good.
When we got back to our Jeep, our driver took us down lower to a kind of sandy plain. Still at the top of the volcano, but lower than the peak. It looked like this from above.
Once we got down there, our driver parked on a hill and basically just looked super epic sitting on the bumper while we walked around and took a bunch of pictures like the tourists that we were.
After the sand plains, we went to a place called Teletubbies Hill. It’s less than 5 minutes from the sands, but it’s all lush and green.
It kind of looks like something from a painting. We put my blanket to good use here and had a picnic of leftover chocolate chip cookies and half eaten bags of chips we found in the Jeep. This was also the point at which we began to warm up now that the sun was getting higher. This was also the point at which we started to become delirious due to so many hours of no sleep. We made some ridiculous videos which also included strangers urinating in the background. Unfortunately for you, you will never see these videos as I am not in possession of a single one of them.
After Teletubbies Hill (but really, who named this place!?), we drove to the whispering sands. Just to be clear (because I asked our driver), these are NOT the same sands we went to earlier. Those sands don’t whisper.
But apparently neither do the so called “whispering sands”. We tried really hard to hear them whispering. But… nothing.
We were pretty tired by this point, so we had our Jeep driver take us back down the mountain. But not before we did some serious drifting on the sand flats. This activity seems much less scary in the daylight.
Before I move on to the next part of our adventure, I need to confess something. You might want to sit down for this. Are you ready?
Here is true confession time. We took approximately eleventeen hundred selfies up there.
That’s right. Like total tourists. We did it. We did it shamelessly. Selfies everywhere. So here’s a summary of some of our better selfies (that I totally stole from my friend’s Instagram account). Top left shows us at the peak right as the sun was rising. Notice the crowd in the background. Also notice my fleece blanket wrapped around my friend’s neck. After he made fun of me for bringing a blanket to a mountain. Top right is us on the non-whispering sand flats. Notice the crazy person in the background doing a cartwheel. Oh wait… he’s one of us. Bottom left shows us having our picnic and soaking up the sun at Teletubbies Hill (sans peeing man in the background. You’re welcome). And bottom right is us at the whispering sands after giving up on hearing the sands whisper. Notice how we are wearing fewer and fewer layers in each picture.
Anyways. Confessions are over. We made it back down to the base of the mountain and met up with our first driver who had driven us there from Surabaya. He had spent the night in the car waiting for us. He said there was a waterfall nearby that we could hike to, and he asked if we wanted to see it. We felt like we had a little energy left in us, so we decided to do it. It was an easy hike. I mean… there was a sidewalk the entire way. It’s not like we were bush-whacking our way through the jungle or anything.
It was only about a 10 minute walk upstream to the waterfall.
Not the most amazing waterfall I’ve ever seen. But to be fair, this was only part of it. To get to the second part, you had to hike through the river, UNDER the first waterfall, and back behind it to see the rest. I was wearing jeans and carrying my DSLR, so I was not keen on this. The boys wanted the adventure though, so they donned rain ponchos and headed on back. About 15 minutes later, they came back not too wet for the wear, and declared the other waterfall “so-so”. I don’t feel like I missed out on anything by sipping ice cold water in the shade while they did their thing.
For whatever reason, I have no photos of our trip after this one. But what a way to end the pictures, because… check out that photobomb.
After the waterfall, we got some lunch, then made the long drive back to Surabaya. Instead of going to bed early, we made the terrible decision to go watch Jurassic World and get dinner (but it wasn’t REALLY terrible because we had fun doing it). We all dropped into bed, exhausted, at about 10 PM. Sunday morning, we slept in, had pork for breakfast, watched some Netflix, then caught an afternoon train back home.
I’ve written so many words and posted so many pictures. But I feel like I’m failing miserably at giving you even a glimpse of what this trip was like. First of all, even if I could recall every single word of every single conversation that was had this weekend and post it all here, you still wouldn’t understand how good it was for my heart and soul to be surrounded all weekend by these three people so in love with their Creator. I came home from this physically exhausting weekend feeling spiritually and emotionally refreshed simply because of time spent with them. And secondly, pictures really cannot do justice to everything I saw this weekend. You know those verses in the Bible that talk about how creation declares the glory of God? Well, Gunung Bromo couldn’t be shouting any louder!
“Langit menceritakan kemuliaan Allah, dan cakrawala memberitakan pekerjaan tangan-Nya; hari meneruskan berita itu kepada hari, dan malam menyampaikan pengetahuan itu kepada malam. Tidak ada berita dan tidak ada kata, suara mereka tidak terdengar; tetapi gema mereka terpancar ke seluruh dunia, dan perkataan mereka sampai ke ujung bumi.” – Mazmur 19:2-5
